This year was my very first Digital Construction Week and a very interesting one as well. Many people attended from all over the UK and further afield from across Europe and the world.

There were so many talks to choose from on many different subjects from everyone’s favourite subjects such as openBIM, COBie, CDE’s, BIM Level two and much much more.

Day One Highlights:

My day one started with a great talk from David Philp (CDBB Change Consultant) on Applying Government Soft landings alongside Stephen Batchelor (Project Director – Department for Education) looking at the Department for Educations Soft Landings Strategy. One big take away from this session was ‘lessons learnt’ has been applied. I still don’t hear may organisations taking note of how things have gone during their last project. Take note, it’s not just about what went wrong, it can be about what worked well also.

It was interesting attending a panel discussion with four industry experts on Asset Information Requirements (AIR) with no client’s insight.

Security isn’t always at the top of people lists as it appears but there was an interesting talk about applying a security minded information management. Balancing those security requirements and understanding those risks on a project isn’t always easy. For best practices for information security management refer to ISO/IEC 27000-series and PAS 1192-5 (soon to be replaced with ISO 19650-5).

I would be interested to see how many organisations out there have, use or implement a security minded approach?

I didn’t manage to attend all the talks due to networking which was a shame with many great talks on over the day. It was great to meet some old ones and many new as well from in and around the industry.

Me and my colleagues Richard White and Jonny Pye took at look a PlanGrid for the first time and what an easy application it is to use and work with. If you work in the construction industry and on-site, I would recommend taking a look.

There were a number of events on after day one but I was tired after a long day so grabbed some food and headed back to my hotel to be refreshed ready for day two.

Day Two Highlights:

Day two started in the same way with another Government Soft Landings talk this time with ProCure22 framework which, even though there are a number of contractors bidding against each other, they have worked together on to build the ProCure22 framework. This gives them an efficiency and productive process.

The talk I was most interested in was Automating Concrete Construction by Paul Shepherd (Senior Lecturer at University of Bath). How concrete is one of the worst materials for emissions, yet we still use so much of it in construction. 4.2 trillion kg of cement globally which is responsible for close to 7% of global carbon dioxide emissions. University of Bath are working the university of Cambridge to see how we can improve how we use concrete with the likes of offsite production and reshaping to reduce waste. Paul believes that 3D printing is not the answer for concrete. A good final thought from Paul was “Stop and think, do things different”.

Unity presented with Reflect on how they are working together with stakeholders to review projects in realtime with there software and a BIM cave. Unity also announced they have partnered with Autodesk to replace their Revit live solution. If you didn’t know Autodesk Revit 2020 does not support Revit Live. For more information please go to the Autodesk Knowledge Network at the following link.

The final session I attended before I left for home was by Mike Ford (BIM Manager at UWE). I have vast interest in this talk because I used to do the same role at The University of Manchester. It was interesting they used the MOJ EIR and edited it to use as their own. Mike explained how they have had the buy in from the university to embed BIM as business as usual. The digital team get hands-on with clash detection, design collaboration, review with designers, contractors and internal FM teams using Revizto.

Final thoughts:

A great two days but trying to cram so much into such a short space of time was difficult. Although it has been around for a little while now, the newest buzz words ‘Digital Twin’  and so many people talking about it over the two days. I don’t know about anyone else, but I am sick of hearing it already!

Next year I would like to see more actual clients presenting and not a consultant or contractor talking about their experiences. I would like to hear more about the issues we come across and not the fantastic things some organisations are doing. Maybe less talks as some overrun and felt like such a fast turnaround. It made it hard to ask questions or get all the presentation because you were running between talks.

I forgot how busy traveling on the trains and underground in London can be… I thought it was busy up north in Manchester.

Finally I managed to get 5 minutes with SOFiSTiK partners about their solutions which I will be looking at in more detail over the next few months. So look out for a few blogs, webinars, tweets and much more.